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James Cameron Brings Even More "Avatar"

Director James Cameron chats about the re-release of "Avatar," coming back to theaters this August with an extra nine minutes. Also, James tells us about the "Avatar" sequel and the extra goodies in the multi-disc box set that's coming out. (Published Tuesday, March 4, 2014)

Avatars 2 and 3 are going to happen.

Oscar winning director James Cameron has agreed to make a pair of sequels to last year's 3-D blockbuster, which is the highest-grossing movie of all time, announced Fox films bosses Jim Gianopulos and Tom Rothman. The blustery movie maker has cleared his schedule to make the films his next two projects, with the first one due out in 2014 and the next a year later. The announcement was first reported by Nikki Finke, of Deadline.com.

"Avatar was conceived as an epic work of fantasy – a world that audiences could visit, across all media platforms, and this moment marks the launch of the next phase of that world, said Cameron, who will produce the movie with Jon Landau. "I'm looking forward to returning to Pandora, a world where our imaginations can run wild."

"Avatar" took in nearly $2.8 billion in worldwide box office. It is also the top-selling Blu-ray disc of all time.

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Cameron had been exploring a "Cleopatra" film which would star Angeline Jolie, but the "Avatar" announcement would appear to put those plans on hold.

Filming the next two "Avatars" may not be as difficult, with the first one under his belt. In an interview with the LA Times last April, Cameron laid out what his challenge would be.

"To do what we did before at half the price and in half the time," Cameron said. "We know our methodology works. We also know it took two years to come up with. It didn’t even become efficient until the last two months of the production. So we were four years into a project before we had this machine running smoothly.

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"Now, none of that has anything to do with coming up with a great story or great characters or great new settings and so on. That all is a given."